Doubtful Lineage of the Nizari Imamate (Aga Khans)

 

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

In the Name of Allah, the Rahman, the Merciful

الصلاة والسلام عليك يا خاتم النبيين

Prayers and peace be upon you, Seal of the Prophets

In the previous entry I exposed the fact that the current Nizari Isma’ili Imamate is a fraud, and it is very doubtful that these “Imams” including the current Aga Khan, are descendants of the Holy Prophet, peace be upon him. The historian Ata Malik Juvayni (1226-1283) mentions that Hasan, the son of Muhammad bin Buzurg Umid, who was the Da’i of the Nizari Isma’ilis at Alamut, after succeeding his father to that office eventually proclaimed himself the Imam and that he was really the son of the concealed Imam: “In the baseless treatises that he wrote and in his exposition of his clumsy creed he would sometimes insinuate and sometimes explicitly assert that though in appearance he had been considered to be the son of Muhammad, the son of Buzurg-Umid, he was in fact an Imam and the son of an Imam, a descendant of Nizar, the son of Mustansir.” (Tarikh Jahangushay, v.3, p.229; The History of the World-Conqueror, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1958, v.2, p.690)

Aga Khani apologist, Dr. Khalil Andani, Ph.D in Islamic Studies, attempted to answer what he dubs the “Juvaini narrative” impugning the lineage of his Imams, by citing an earlier historian, Ibn al-Azraq al-Fariqi, who mentions that Nizar had a son by the daughter of his Da’i, Hasan al-Sabbah, named Muhammad, who then had a son named Nizar. Al-Fariqi says that this Nizar bin Muhammad bin Nizar is, at the time of his writing, the current “caliph” of the Isma’ilis:

وجاء إليه الحسن بن الصباح من ألموت وأقام بها عنده وتزوج إلى بنت الحسن بن الصباح وولد منها ولدا وسماه محمدا

Al-Hasan bin al-Sabbah came to him [Nizar] from Alamut and stayed with him there [in Egypt]. He married the daughter of al-Hasan bin al-Sabbah and had a son from her whom he named Muhammad (Tarikh al-Fariqi, p.268)

وجماعة يقولون أنه ليس له في الامارة حظ لأن أباه المستنصر ما نص عليه وإنما جلس بالغلبة وإنما النص كان على ولده نزار فخرج إلى ألموت مع الحسن بن الصباح على ما ذكرناه وولد ولدا سماه محمدا وكناه أبا القاسم ولقبه بالمصطفى وكان خليفة الاسماعيلية وقالوا يلقب بالقائم وولد ولدا نص عليه سماه نزار بن محمد وهو الآن خليفة الاسماعيلية فى هذا الزمان وهو على قولهم بخراسان وقال قوم هو بالمغرب وقال قوم هو بمصر فأخرج منها وان نزار بن المستنصر لم يخرج من مصر وولد ولده محمدا بمصر ونص عليه ومات مختفيا وبقى ولده محمد وولد نزارا

And a group says that he [al-Musta’li] had no share in the Emirate because his father, al-Mustansir, did not appoint him, but rather sat by force, and the appointment was for his son, Nizar, so he went out to Alamut with al-Hasan bin al-Sabbah, as we mentioned, and he had a son whom he named Muhammad, and he gave him the kunya Abu ul-Qasim and the title al-Mustafa, and he was the caliph of the Isma’ilis. They said that he was called al-Qa’im, and he had a son whom he appointed, and he named him Nizar bin Muhammad, and he is now the caliph of the Isma’ilis in this time. According to what they say, he is in Khurasan. Some people said that he is in the Maghreb, and some people said that he is in Egypt, so he was expelled from it, and Nizar bin al-Mustansir did not leave Egypt, and his son Muhammad was born in Egypt, and he appointed him, and he died in hiding. His son Muhammad and the son Nizar remained (ibid, p.276)

The problem with this citation from al-Fariqi is that he identifies the son and grandson of Nizar as Muhammad and Nizar bin Muhammad, whereas the Nizaris/Aga Khanis believe that the son of Nizar who succeeded him was named Ali, with the title “al-Hadi” and the son who succeeded him to the Imamate was named Muhammad, with the title “al-Muhtadi”. This and other references put forward by Dr. Khalil Andani are problematic because they simply relay what the Nizaris believe and propagate. When I pointed out the discrepancy in the names of the “concealed” Imams of Alamut that supposedly were the children of Nizar as reported by al-Fariqi, he answered me on X (formerly Twitter), saying, “The names don’t matter as these weren’t publicly known Imams.”

Yet by putting forward this apologetic, Dr. Andani has nullified the usefulness of al-Fariqi and his chronicle as credible. If the identities of the Imams were concealed from the public, how did al-Fariqi so confidently name them (yet get those names wrong)?

The Nizari Imamate is therefore dubious at the very least. Much like the Twelver Shi’ite doctrine of the occultation of the supposed Twelfth Imam, such a fundamental religious concept lying on shaky ground is sufficient reason to reject it, as Allah says,

وَمَا لَهُم بِهِ مِنْ عِلْمٍ ۖ إِن يَتَّبِعُونَ إِلَّا الظَّنَّ ۖ وَإِنَّ الظَّنَّ لَا يُغْنِي مِنَ الْحَقِّ شَيْئًا

And they have thereof no knowledge. They follow not except assumption, and indeed, assumption avails not against the truth at all

(Surah 53:28)

Sunni Muslims! Beware of giving up the truth of the manifest Quran and Sunnah for the doubtful doctrine of Imamate of these astray sects.